This year’s Call of Duty game, which is expected to be Black Ops 6 and take place during the Gulf War, will launch on Xbox Game Pass, sources tell The Wall Street Journal. Publication Reuters has also corroborated the reports.
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The upper limits of Xbox Game Pass will soon be tested as Microsoft plans to roll out Call of Duty, one of the world’s most popular video game franchises, onto the subscription service. Inside sources have told two major news outlets that this year’s new Call of Duty title will be released onto Game Pass on day one.
The move has caused speculation and doubt among gamers who question the financial viability of the service, despite multiple clarifications from Xbox management that Game Pass is not only profitable, but sustainable. Our own calculations indicate that Game Pass made as much as $1.887 billion in revenues throughout calendar year 2021, and up to $1.796 billion in 2022.
Accidentally-released court documents from the FTC trial in July 2023 reveal that Microsoft wants to achieve 110 million Xbox Game Pass subscribers by 2030, alongside an industry-leading $32 in revenues.
The documents, which may or may not reflect Microsoft’s current plans, saw significant expansion across subscribers on console, cloud, and PC. Xbox consoles are expected to make up the majority of these numbers, or 53% at 58 million subscribers, whereas cloud clocks in at 29% or 32 million and PC at 18% or 20 million.
6Microsoft has not confirmed these plans, but has repeatedly said that it intends to launch new Call of Duty games onto the Game Pass service. Just this month Xbox president Sarah Bond said that “really big games” would arrive onto the subscription this year across a myriad of studios.
6Earlier reports said that Xbox management was unsure whether or not adding Call of Duty to Xbox Game Pass was a good idea, as consumers would likely opt to buy the subscription instead of paying $70 for the full game.
As per terms from Microsoft’s 10-year agreement to keep publishing Call of Duty on PlayStation platforms, Microsoft will also offer to bring Call of Duty to Sony’s competing PlayStation Plus subscription service on a day one basis.
Since the beginning of the franchise, all mainline Call of Duty games started first with a premium purchase. Now, however, gamers will be able to access new games in the series by paying a lower-cost, lease-based subscription to access the content. This move will undoubtedly disrupt full game sales in exchange for potential longer-term revenues via subscription.
Call of Duty games sell many millions of copies a year. In 2022, the best year for Call of Duty that saw the franchise hit lifetime revenues of $31 billion, Modern Warfare 2 managed to generate over $1 billion exclusively from full game sales.